Pottawatomie County · Manhattan metro

Metal buildings in St. Marys.

We help St. Marys customers plan machine sheds, hay and equipment storage, shops and garages on the east end of Pottawatomie County, between Wamego and Topeka along US-24.

This is a county line town. Drive five miles east and you’re in Shawnee County, which regulates buildings on its rural ground very differently from Pottawatomie County. Two neighbors on the same stretch of highway can be working from different rulebooks.

Permitting, the county line, and the valley

Inside St. Marys city limits, the city permits the building. Outside them, you’re on Pottawatomie County ground, and it matters where.

The county’s adopted building codes cover the Blue Township Sewer District around Green Valley, at the far end of the county near Manhattan. Rural ground around St. Marys sits well outside that district. We confirm what applies to your parcel before drawings are produced, and we confirm the edition the city is enforcing for anything inside town.

On county ground, Kansas law limits what can be required of agricultural buildings. Under K.S.A. 19-2908, county zoning doesn’t apply to land and buildings used for agricultural purposes, and a 2016 Attorney General opinion concluded a county can’t require buildings used solely for agriculture to meet county construction codes. The county decides whether a building qualifies. Hay storage usually does. A shop you also run a business from often doesn’t.

Across the line it works differently. Shawnee County adopted Topeka’s building code for its unincorporated area and administers it through a notarized affidavit of code compliance. If your ground is near Rossville or anywhere east of the county line, see the Rossville page.

Floodplain rules apply on both sides. The agricultural limitation doesn’t extend to them, and on Kaw Valley bottomland south of town that’s the first thing we check. Pad elevation there matters as much as the frame does.

Every building we supply arrives engineered for the loads at its address. Where a reviewer asks for site-specific drawings, that runs roughly $2.00 per square foot on tubular against about $0.75 on cold-formed, which is a $3,000 swing on a 40×60 and worth knowing before you compare quotes.